


Sometimes You Just Have To Punch A Dinosaur

by CopperCrane2



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Crystal Tokyo Era, Dinosaurs, F/M, Marital Conflict, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 14:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16518161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCrane2/pseuds/CopperCrane2
Summary: A dinosaur can be a metaphor for many things. In the case of Makoto and Nephrite, however, it's a literal problem. It doesn't help that they're also currently embroiled in a domestic dispute.Life in 30th Century Crystal Tokyo isn't always the utopia it's cracked up to be...Soundtrack found here: https://soundcloud.com/ginadonahue/sets/mako-x-neph





	1. High Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smokingbomber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokingbomber/gifts).



> For smokingbomber. Thanks for your patience, and all your hard work!
> 
> (Read all her amazing stuff here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokingbomber/pseuds/smokingbomber).
> 
> Please listen to her awesome soundtrack as you read! https://soundcloud.com/ginadonahue/sets/mako-x-neph

[Listen to the Soundtrack by Smokingbomber here.](https://soundcloud.com/ginadonahue/sets/mako-x-neph)

* * *

 

“It's literally the year thirty forty three, how is this still even an issue?!”

Fernando stepped out of the bathroom - naked and moist from the shower, a foamy toothbrush slack in his jaw - so he could better get his point across. “Becaush,  _ you're _ de one who’b making dis a problem in de first plate by blowing it out of brobortion.” Having conveyed his argument to his satisfaction, he headed back in to continue with his oral hygiene routine.  

“Y-” Makoto had to physically bite her bottom lip to stop herself from answering him in a way that was surely going to escalate what was currently a mildly heated discussion into a full-blown argument. “You _didn't_ just say that.”

He gargled and spat before answering. “Look, I already said I was sorry. The fuck more do you want, babe?”

She scoffed at his audacity. “What I  _ want _ , you giant ass, is for you not to do these kind of things in the first place!” 

“I’m  _ sorry  _ I’m not completely infallible. I make mistakes just like the rest of the goddamn human race does,” he popped his head out and pointed his razor at her, “including you.”

“It wasn’t about the screw up. It’s about you doing stuff like this  _ all the time _ . It wouldn’t matter if we were still naive, broken kids with a boat load of issues,” she said, “but we’re literally the oldest, most powerful beings on the planet! Grow the hell up. You’ve had a thousand years, that’s plenty of time to learn not to do these stupid kinds of things.”

“We were asleep for most of that,” he called out as he tapped the shaving cream out of the blade.

“Stop being pedantic, you know what I mean.”

“Whatever, and it  _ wasn’t _ stupid. Reckless? Sure. Rude? Maybe a little, but-”

“Reckless?! How about completely disrespectful and childish?” She tossed her eye pencil on the counter, unable to concentrate on not poking herself blind with it when she was so angry. “Why aren’t you taking what I’m saying seriously?”

“How can I when you’re asking me to do the impossible?” He walked into the bedroom and pulled on his boxer-briefs. “I’ve already apologised, what more can I physically do? You want me to break the laws of the universe and sneak into the time gate so I can go back t-”

“Your apology doesn’t mean shit, Nando,” she interrupted, “when you’re just going to do it again at some point.”

He ran a frustrated hand through his damp hair. “ _ How, _ ” he asked dramatically, “can I guarantee that something will  _ never  _ happen? We’re practically immortal. Probability dictates that in all freaking likelihood it  _ will  _ happen again. What? You want me to lie?!”

That was the last straw. She was  _ done.  _ They’d been at it all morning and she was not going to let him get her angrier than she already was. He knew exactly what she wanted from him and he was deliberately not giving it to her. His apology wasn't enough because he didn’t mean it, not really. He’d said it himself, faced with a similar situation in the future, he was making no guarantees that he wouldn’t do the same thing again. 

_ Jerk.  _

Staunchly refusing to make eye contact with him through the vanity mirror, she took in a deep breath, calming the rage coursing through her. Despite being the less stubborn of the two of them, she had the quicker temper and was thus usually the one to say something that she would almost immediately regret, which normally meant she was the one to apologise first. Not this time - she was not going to let him have this one. Today,  _ she _ was going to take the high road. Pleased with her planned course of action, she leaned forward and began applying her black pencil to the other eye. 

Having not received a reply to his last comment, Nando was mistakenly under the impression that their argument was over and that he had come out of it the victor. “Babe, where’s the shirt I was going to wear today?” There was no harm being decent about it and simply moving on without gloating. 

She ignored him as he began hunting in the adjoining wardrobe-room for clothing. “Babe?” he prompted. 

Makoto moved onto a top coat of lip gloss. 

He let out a loud and exaggerated groan. “Seriously?! The actual  _ silent  _ treatment?” 

She got up, walked past him and began dressing without so much as sparing him a glance. 

“Ok, fine. I’ll play this game, but know this, babe: when I play,  _ I play to win. _ ”

Makoto didn’t even bother to roll her eyes. Instead, she slipped on her nude pumps and chose a matching handbag before gliding out the room. 

It was already driving him to distraction. “Come oooooooon, will you just  _ talk  _ to me?!” 

She slammed the door shut behind her. 

“I’ll take that as a no, then.” He sighed and flopped himself backwards onto the bed. “Shit.” 


	2. Work Meeting

“Noooooope.” Makoto’s defiance resounded within the empty room, the crystal walls amplifying her staunch refusal to cooperate.

Minako crossed her arms. “Yes.”

“I'm sorry, maybe the acoustics are messing with the mic-”

“They aren’t.”

“-but I literally just said the opposite of that word.”

The translucent holograph that currently stood in place of the leader of the Senshi rubbed at her temple as she tried to figure out a way to resolve this. “I get it, hun. I really do,” she said, doing her best to at least sound sympathetic, “but it's not like I have any other choice here.”

Makoto wasn’t budging. “There are easily six other people who can go with him instead.”

“Six? I don't know if you’ve noticed this, but I'm currently stuck in a place which _literally_ exists and doesn’t exist simultaneously, so my availability isn’t exactly-”

“Well, what about Rei?” she interrupted, preventing Minako’s excuses from building momentum.

Minako shook her head. “Both she and Cairo are filling in for Nitty and Dimi.”

She raised her eyebrows in skepticism. “Palatial duties?” She scoffed.  “I call favouritism.”

Minako feigned outrage at the idea. “How dare you,” she said, not taking the accusation to heart. “The update briefings are all happening this week, remember? If you want to trade places with one of them, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. If I remember correctly this month it’s the departments of transport, waste disposal and public infrastructure. You wanna your spend days listening to maintenance reports about street lighting and recycling plants?”

Makoto pulled a face of distaste. “Maybe...” she tried before giving up the pretence almost immediately. “Alright fine, no, definitely no.” Those things were so boring _._ “What about Ami?”

“Uh, hello? The _summit_?” she reminded, incredulous at the very idea of Makoto having forgotten. “It’s in, like, two days?!”

Makoto frowned, seemingly confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Minako’s eyes widened in horror. “The October Summit!” she repeated, her voice high and tinny through the holo speakers. If Makoto had forgotten, then that meant that _everyone_ had forgotten, and if everyone had forgotten then Ami was finalising everything _on her own_ , which meant that there would definitely be security details or catering issues or visa restrictions or payroll plans or _something_ she'd missed.

“We hold, like, fifty summits a year,” Makoto shrugged, “we just had one last week on animal welfare. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“The two hundredth annual summit on medical innovation?!” she practically yelled. Ami was a genius, but this was too huge for any single person to manage comprehensively. “The one she’s hosting?! The one with literally over a thousand delegates?!” She’d assumed they’d split the management and oversight of tasks between them all. _Dammit, Ami, why didn't you insist on them doing their jobs?!_

“Uh… maybe?” Makoto squinted and bit her lower lip as she tried to recall any details. “I might remember her saying something about it?”

The blonde threw her hands in the air, flying into full panic mode. “Oh my _god_ ,” the hologram flickered. “I leave you guys alone for one minute, _one, single, damn minute_ -”

“By ‘a minute’ you mean a year and a half, right?”

“Semantics, pedantics, Makoto! Rei was supposed to ensure everything was in order at Himeji Castle. _Tell_ me at least that she’s got the welcome team set up for the Opening Ceremony-” Makoto threw her head back and practically guffawed, having played the joke as long as she could before completely losing it. At her friend’s laughter, Minako stopped talking and crossed her arms, a small embarrassed flush colouring her cheeks.

“Oh my stars, I was kidding, you dope! How could you even fall for that?” Whenever Minako was away from Crystal Tokyo she would get so paranoid about anything going wrong in her absence that all common sense would fly out the window. It made her ridiculously gullible to pranks. “It’s not like this hasn’t been the only thing Ami’s talked about for months! Of course everything’s set up, the first few hundred have already transported in. We’ll have everyone here by go-time, everything’s working as scheduled.”

Minako was in no way amused. “Ha ha. Ha. Don’t quit your day job.”

“ _What’s going on? Everything ok at home?_ ” Makoto recognised the faint voice as Endymion’s, but he was out of the holo camera’s view.

“While we’re on the subject,” Minako said, acting like she didn’t hear anything, “I’m invoking a party line whip, you _all_ better actually turn up to the sessions, especially since the three of us aren’t going to make it back in time.”

“Oh, come on,” Makoto huffed, “seriously? It’s not like any real ‘innovation’ is actually going to be discussed. You know all that stuff happens afterwards. This is just a bunch of old farts sitting around a large room ruminating about stuff they’re not even going to see invented in their lifetime.”

“And Ami’s hosting it. I need decent Senshi representation to make up from Nitty and Dimi not being there.”

“I can’t believe you’re delaying your return _again._ ”

Minako shrugged. “What can we do? It’s not like I can speed up this whole process. Do you _want_ Elysium to explode in a fiery hell ball and take Earth with it?”

“ _That’s not what’s going to happen, Minako_.”

The blonde rolled her eyes and looked at the man off-camera. “You don’t know that.”

“ _I kind of do.”_

“Dude, just _shut the hell up_ , I’m exaggerating to make a point!”

There was a pause as Endymion tried to figure out whether his Royal Court were actually allowed to talk to him like that. “ _You- you know I’m your king, right?”_

He was ignored in favour of her more pressing issue. “I need you to tell the others-”

“You tell them,” Makoto countered. “I’m super busy now, thanks to you. I've got to go beat up some dude and his giant ego, _and_ also a bad guy, apparently, intent on ruling the world.”

Minako sighed. “Didn't see _that_ one coming…Look, throw me a bone here, please? I'm stuck in Elysium with these two goofy love birds-” (“ _Hey_!”) “You’re the only one I can trust to pass on the message and make sure it's enforced without the whole thing actually ending up in bloody murder.”

It was easier said than done, and Makoto was still feeling resentful about being made to take a mission with Nando. “Get your ex-husband to do it for you.”

“Stop calling him that! We're in a committed, long-term, polyamorous relationship, thank you very much.”

Makoto rolled her eyes. “So you insist on telling _everyone_.”

She pretended not to hear the barb in order to keep the conversation civil. “Is Alex still locked away in his lab?”

She tried remembering if she’d spotted the elusive Zoisite in any of his usual haunts outside his closely guarded, creepy laboratory, but she couldn’t recall any sight of him. That almost always meant one thing. “Yeah, no-one’s seen him for days, he might be dead for all we know, eaten by one of his own experiments.”

“Well, I doubt he's forgotten about it, but-”

If there was one member of the team who might _genuinely_ have forgotten… “You never know with him.”

Minako’s eyes lit up. “Exactly.” _Finally_ , they were on the same page. “So just in case, I need you to pull him out of there the night before and make sure he's a presentable, functioning human being.”

“You know,” Makoto tilted her head as she realised something, “I'm starting to feel like the Shitennou are just children disguised as male adults and I'm on permanent babysitting duty.”

The blonde chuckled. “Preaching to the converted. But do me this favour, will you? Please? He’ll be kicking himself for weeks if he does forget to go, and Ami will be _so_ disappointed.”

“I still fail to see how this is my problem.”

“Ugh.” _So close._ Why was it so hard to get ten supposedly immortal best friends to cooperate? “You're one of the few people he’ll acknowledge the existence of when he's in Isaac Newton mode.” At Makoto’s skeptical frown, she clarified. “He's scared shitless of you, so he’ll open the door.”

Makoto thought of a perfectly reasonable alternative. “He listens to Ami.”

“It's _her_ event, she's never going to force him to go to something like this, as much as she’ll want him there. She's irritatingly humble.”

“Fair enough.” She sighed, and mentally scratched Alex off her list of potential Nando-replacements for the mission. But that _did_ still leave one person to go instead of her. “What about Eddy?” she asked, hopeful.

Minako was confused. “What about him?”

“He can go with- with _him_.”

“Oh my God, are we seriously still on this?!” She’d forgotten that Makoto had a stubborn streak. “Ok, so Eddy can't go because, one, he and Alex just came back from the last mission, they’re on break, and two, he's on CP District lockdown because he's the designated survivor for the week.”

“I’ll swap with him.”

“You were designated survivor last week.”

“N- No I wasn’t.” Her eyes shifted suspiciously to the right.

Minako huffed. “I can tell that’s not true from here and I’m calling you from a different dimension. You’re the worst liar in history, Makoto.”

“Whatever, dork.”

“Jock.”

“Airhead.”

“Serial mom-friend.”

Makoto snorted. “How is that even an insult?”

“It doesn’t matter, you can't be the designated survivor twice in a row. People will think we’re placing unreasonable amounts of importance on you. It's not politically savvy.”

“Oh please, that's such bull. We've violated that rule a hundred times already. Nobody really cares.”

“Didn’t Rei say something about it being his birthday this week?” Minako tried. “I’m pretty sure she said she wanted to take him somewhere for it. I think she has plans.”

“Yeah well, he’s just as immortal as we are, he can skip a birthday or two.”

“You're going with Nando, end of discussion.”

“ _Is that Mako-chan?_ ”

“Nitty?” Makoto’s eyes lit up at the sound of her Queen in the background. “Put her on the holo.”

“No, you’ll try to manipulate her to your own ends.”

“What are you talking about? I just want to ask her what kind of cake she wants, for when she comes back.” She grinned smugly, knowing exactly what havoc she was wrecking.

“ _Cake_?!”

“No!”

“ _I definitely heard the word ‘cake’. Don't lie to me, Minako, I'm never wrong about these things!_ ”

Minako turned back to Makoto. “Nice try, lady. But you're not going over my head with this one. You're a Senshi of Crystal Tokyo, for crying out loud. You can put aside a measly argument for the greater good and work with your assigned partner.”

“It's not a measly argument. He's an ass.”

“Hey, _you_ married him.”

“Don't remind me.” Makoto winced as a kink in her shoulder made itself known. She wished he was there to rub it away, although the tension was caused entirely _by_ him, so… it basically meant that she was in pain (his fault) and she was not getting a massage to make it better (also his fault).   _Asshat._ “Blame it on my youth and inexperience.”

“Ah, to be naive _fifty_ _year olds_ , again. Filled with the exuberance of fresh beginnings and young love.”

“Your sarcasm is not helping.”

“It's an easy mission, sweets. Maybe it'll help clear the air between the two of you.”

“I doubt it, but whatever.” She was about to end the holo, but remembered that she’d left her Queen hanging. “Tell her I'll whip up a Black Forest for when she comes back, or maybe a pie of some sort, apples are in season.”

“Don’t give her options like that, she’ll spend too long trying to figure which one she wants and then just ask for both.”

“Good point.”

“ _There’s going to be more than one cake?!”_

Minako grinned at her Queen’s antics. “Well, you’ve gone and done it now.”

“ _Wohoo! Mamo-chan! Did you hear?! Mako-chan’s gonna make us a whole feast of autumn desserts for when we go back…_ ”

“This is entirely your fault,” Minako said. “Have fun super-baking... _after_ the mission with Nando.”

“Urgh. I’ll see you in a month.”


	3. Progress

“Minako says we're the ones on for this evening.”

Nando looked up from the tablet he was reading. “You mean the crazy guy who threatened to rid the world of ‘modern creatures’? I thought the Russians caught him already.”

“They did, but apparently he timed the release of some kind of ‘ferocious animal’ in one of their national parks. It’s either going to be a supervisory mission or it’s a subdue & terminate, depending on whether they find the creature in time. Knowing our luck it'll be the latter, but whichever it is, we’re a go.”

“Which park is it in?”

“I don’t know, it’ll be in the briefing. Read it yourself and find out.”

He deliberately ignored the snark in her tone. “Ok, well, in the meantime, I’m heading out to pick up lunch at TK Burger.” Makoto _loved_ TK Burger. “You want anything?”

She hesitated for a second, knowing it was going to shift power more to him, but _damn_ the man knew the right buttons to press. “Yeah,” she relented, “I could go for a large double with fries. And you know the kind of drink I like - the pink one, whatever it’s called.”

“I think they’ve switched to their fall menu already.”

Makoto threw her hand out, as if she was annoyed with him still being there and asking her questions. “Whatever, get me the purple one, then.”

“Sure. And since you’re talking to me n-” he was cut off by her slamming the bedroom door. “Ok, then.”

“ _Still mad at you,_ ” she said from inside.

That made him smile. “Progress. I’ll take that.”


	4. Jupiter 1, Dinosaur 0, Nephrite -10.

“Ok, _enough_ with the passive-aggressive attitude.”

“It's not passive-aggressive if I've already explained why I'm so freaking mad at you, you asshat!” Makoto picked up a small boulder and threw it. “It's just aggressive-aggressive.”

“Well _forgive me_ for mislabelling your particular brand of anger while I'm trying not to bleed out from an actual goddamn dinosaur bite _and_ find your filter app on this impossibly disorganised phone menu at the same time.”

“It's a flesh wound, you baby.”

The tyrannosaurus roared and began charging.

“When did you suddenly become an expert in paleontological bacteria? For all you know, I could get an infection and die from this.” He lifted his arm with a soft grunt as the MedBot floated around him with a body-glue gun.

Makoto ducked and rolled out of the creature’s way. “Oh God, please no, I'd never hear the end of it if you did. You'd haunt my ass just to prove your point.”

“Damn right, woman. For all of eternity.” He did his best to focus on the screen instead of the pain engulfing his entire side, but it was difficult, even with the drugs which were being pumped into him. “Seriously, how many apps do you have on this thing?! And have you never heard of a folder?” he snapped. “Hey, does the MedBot have a heater? I’m freezing.”

“Shut up, I keep them that way to make them easily accessible,” she said, “and I _told_ you to bring a sweater!”

“I think I’m bleeding out.”

“The MedBot would have sounded the alert if it didn’t have your blood seepage under control. You’re just underdressed.”

“You have over ten menu pages.” The MedBot swivelled around to begin sealing the injury in his back. “How is that ‘accessible’?”

She body slammed the creature. “Are you getting this?!”

“Hold on, a wifi thing just popped up. I'm trying to get rid of it.”

“ _Wifi_ ?” she yelled over the creature’s raucous thump as it hit a cluster of trees, _“I think you’re using the wrong app!_ ”

“No, I'm not.”

“ _Huh_?!”

“ _I said ‘no I’m not’_!”

Makoto shifted from her fighting stance, realising she was going to have to up her game slightly in order to subdue the creature. “You're definitely using the wrong app. ‘Pretty Shades’ doesn't use the Internet.”

“I'm definitely _not_ -” The T-Rex let out a roar, interrupting the conversation. “Rude fucker, isn’t he?” he said, genuinely offended.

She rolled her increasingly luminous eyes as she began to charge herself with power. “It’s a freaking dinosaur. I don’t think social constructs of courtesy are foremost in its thoughts.”

“Yeah but he was a _programmed_ dinosaur, so- wait, is ‘Pretty Shades’ the one with the pink camera or the one with the pink circle graphic… thing?”

Makoto - who was now floating in a swirl of hot neon current, cherry tree petals and dark winds - answered in a deep voice that boomed out into the park. “ ** _Neither_ ** _…_ _ither_ _…_ _ther_ _..._ ”

“How many filter apps are _on_ here?”

“ ** _Urghhhhhhhh, forget iiiiit… IIIIIIII’ll edit iiiit_ ** **_later_ ** _…_ _later_ _…._ _ater_ ,” her booming voice caused a mini-hurricane with every word, “ ** _just film thissssssss! IIIIIII'm literally about to punch a_ ** **_dinosaur_ ** **_…_ ** _dinosaur…_ _dinosaur..._ _osaur..._ ”

Nando scoffed, unfazed at the fact that his wife was currently a flying goddess of rage and electricity. “Remember when you used to be nice to me?”

“ ** _FIIIIIIIIIIIIILM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!!_ **”

The words blasted him in the face. “Alright, alright! Jesus, woman.”

The dinosaur charged, Makoto flew. The force from the collision threw Nando three feet into the air.

* * *

 

“Admittedly, that was pretty awesome.” Nando was leaning against a large tree trunk, holding up the phone while Makoto reviewed the footage.

“Yeah, it was.” She took the phone from him to get a better look. “You can see the MedBot at the bottom of the screen sometimes, though.”

He frowned, a little disappointed. “That must have been when it was gluing my wound. You can edit that out, right?”

“Yeah.” She glanced up at him before looking back at the screen. “And I _am_ nice,” she said, not having forgotten their earlier exchange.

“I didn’t say you weren’t nice, I said-”

“I don’t care. I’m still pissed at you.”

“That’s beside the point. You could have thanked me, at least, since you're so _nice_. I thought I did a decent job of getting it all on tape, even though I risked being blinded by a full on Jupiter Thunder Dragon Punch.”

“ _Thank you_ , you big baby, but I’m not apologising for you not keeping outside a twenty metre radius. That’s your own damn fault, it’s not like you don’t know what happens when I do that.” She looked up from the phone, “and nobody says that any more.”

Curiosity won out over the need to point out that she was the one who’d insisted he be _within_ the twenty metre radius to film the whole thing. “Nobody says what anymore?”

“Getting something ‘on tape’.”

He scoffed. “I can use as many outdated expressions as I want, a T-Rex thought I was a meat snack and tried to take a chunk out of my abdomen.”

“That does look pretty messed up, actually,” she admitted, now that she was able to have a closer look at it. She hadn’t realised at the time, but it appeared as if the creature had actually bitten down into his torso. “Can you even make it to the plane?”

“Yes,” he said as he pushed himself off the tree trunk, insulted at her questioning his stamina, “of course I can make it to the damn plane.” Fate, however, decided it wanted to try its hand at comedic timing. He halted in his steps, his face paling. “Or... maybe not.” His vision swam as the blood loss and emergency meds finally kicked in with the sudden and inconvenient force of a speeding freight train.

“What do you mean?” She didn’t try to hide the concern in her voice. He was swaying on his feet. “Fernando?”

“Shit,” was all the warning he could muster before he lost consciousness and dropped to the ground in an impressively accurate impression of the T-Rex.

“Great,” she mumbled. “Just… super.


	5. Flight Home

He woke up to find himself in the med room of their aircraft, with her half dozing peacefully next to him. “Hey,” he said.

For a split second, clouded by the fog of grogginess, she forgot that they were fighting and smiled. “Hey,” she replied, her voice soft with fatigue and affection.

He revelled in that glorious smile; the pain coursing through him, the chills, the fever, they were suddenly easy to ignore, until she came fully to her senses and shifted, turning her back to him. “You’re suffering from a mild case of septicaemia, internal damage and a severe concussion,” she announced coldly.

“I _knew_ it!” he said, before immediately regretting his own sudden and stupidly loud actions. “ _Urgh_. Everything hurts. Fuck that filthy dinosaur and his nasty ass-mouth.”

“The MedBot pumped you with a broad spectrum antibiotic and sealed up the wounds fully while you were out, but you need to get checked properly at home,” she added with her back still turned to him. “You’re suffering from a decent amount of blood loss, too.”

“Told you.”

“Well if you were so sure you were actually bleeding, then-”

“I wasn’t, he got me in the back so I couldn’t actually see the blood flow.”

Her lips were tight, nostrils flared. “God, Nando, if you were anyone else you’d be long dead, you get that, right?”

“Good thing I’m a superhuman in the thirty first century.”

She sat up. “It’s still serious. One of the bite marks was so deep it almost breached your stomach wall.”

“Are you trying to say you’re worried about me?”

She punched him (relatively) lightly on the arm.

“Ow! ‘The hell is wrong with you, woman?”

“What the hell is wrong with _you_ ? Of course I’m worried. I’m _mad_ at you, you jerk. Being angry doesn’t equate to wanting you so badly injured you were at actual risk of dying!”

“‘Badly’ injured? So ‘mildly injured’ is ok?” he joked.

She hit him in the arm again and then threw herself back down onto the medical cot. “You’re an ass,” she bit out and turned away. “You shouldn’t have stayed. You should have gotten yourself back to the plane immediately.”

“If I’d done that, who would’ve recorded your badassery?”

“Flattery won’t help your cause. It was irresponsible of you, _again_. I literally just asked not do these things and you-”

“I’m supposed to let you do all the sacrificing?”

“Yes,” she stated, sitting up _again_ and glaring at him. “I don’t put myself in such risk. I wish you would learn to just _trust_ in me. I’m the second physically strongest woman in the galaxy.”

“You’re _the_ strongest,” he corrected.

She rolled her eyes. “Besting Haruka in an arm wrestle one time when we were both drunk doesn’t count.”

“That’s not the attitude you take when you arm wrestle me.”

“She once picked up and threw an entire building.”

He moved to sit up with her and then decided against it when the room started to spin. “She has the force of an entire planet’s atmosphere to help her.”

“So do I,” she said. “And that’s not even the point. Your undying support doesn’t mean anything when you don’t actually show it.”

“Of course it’s genuine. Everything I do for you is real.”

“Then stop throwing yourself in front of me when you don’t have to. It’s patronizing and hurtful.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes,” he said firmly, and this time, he did sit up. “Yes, I am.” He gripped his cot with both hands to steady himself. “Look babe, I don’t put myself in harm’s way because I think you need protection. I know you’re not weak and I know you’ve been handling yourself since long before I ever came into the picture, it’s just…” he was finding it difficult to focus on the correct words, whether it was because of the injury or the awkwardness of the conversation, he didn’t know. “I know I’m not going to lose you, I trust you too much to think that way, I trust in _us._ But protecting you is part of my job. I’m you’re husband and I’m a Shitennou and frankly, if it comes down to it, between you and me you’re the more valuable asset, you’re the one who wins the bigger fights. The world doesn’t lose as much if I’m not in it.”

Makoto crossed her arms. She loved Fernando for a lot of reasons, his big heart was one of them, but she’d been with him long enough to know when he was bullshitting, even to himself. “So this is all to prove to yourself that you’re useful?”

“What? No!”

“No?”

He hesitated. “Ok, maybe a little.”

“Mmhmm.”

He sighed. “I’m not jealous of you, babe. You being you is what makes you so hot.”

“I know that.” He’d made it more than clear throughout their relationship that her strength and prowess were a huge turn on for him.

“But sometimes I look at myself and I wonder what on Earth you’re doing with me.”

“Nando…”

“And then I have these moments where I imagine my life with you not in it and I just-”

“So you _are_ afraid of losing me.”

“Fine, maybe. Yes.”

“You don’t think I can handle myself?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Nando,” she pressed her fingers to her forehead in frustration. “You’re not the only one this affects. You doing these things makes it all harder for me, too.”

“Yeah, well what if the situation was reversed, huh? Why do you get to put yourself in such danger?”

She moved her hand so he could see her raised eyebrow. “I’m not reckless. I know what I can and can’t handle and I know what _you_ can and can’t handle. I would never butt into your fight when I knew you could deal with it. I wasn’t the one who threw myself into the jaws of a dinosaur, was I?”

“I didn’t… I mean, I wasn’t _trying_ to get eaten…”

“What about the time you took that laser cannon blast and it laid you out for an _entire_ month?”

“I was supposed to watch it hit you?”

“Yes! You saw I was readying to block it. You saw that I saw it coming. I was prepared to take it and you _knew_ it was going to be a minor injury, at worst, for me.”

“Now you’re overestimating your own ability, you’re acting like you would have dusted it off and kept going.”

She rolled her eyes. “It would have taken a day to heal - at worst I would have gotten a few low-degree burns on my arms and a cracked rib or two from the impact against the wall, but nothing more. Instead you’re out of commission, which meant everyone else had to shoulder your responsibilities _and_ we were down a fighter, not to mention the amount of pain you were in and _me_ have to look on like a helpless little damsel.”

He laid himself back down, unable to support himself any longer in a sitting position. “I know what you’re saying, and I get it.”

“You’re not like this with any of the others. You’re not even like this with Endymion.”

“I’m not _in love_ with the others.”

Makoto lifted her eyebrow again.

He scoffed. “Ok, fine. Dimi’s an exception, he’s like Nitty. We’re all a tiny bit in love with him, even you.”

She let him have that one. “Fair.”

“And he has Cairo to act as his personal human shield so I don’t have to worry as much.” He tried leaning on his side to get a clearer view of Makoto but decided against it when the pain increased. “And it’s not like you haven’t sacrificed your life for the Queen before.” The MedBot floated over and injected him with another dose of painkillers.

“That’s different. I'm the Senshi of Protection, it’s literally in my job title, and besides, I wouldn’t stop her from taking on a fight if I knew she could handle it herself. I’m not exactly keen on dying, either.”

“You’re my wife, Makoto.”

“Not on the field, I’m not. And I deserve the respect of you putting your personal feelings aside when we’re out there, just like you do with everyone else.”

He said nothing for a moment, mulling over what she’d said. “Ok.”

“Ok?”

“Ok,” he confirmed. “I’ll try. I’ll try and be better at this.”

She sighed and laid back down. “I don’t need you to try, Nando, you’ve been ‘trying’ for years. I need you to _do_.” She turned to face the other way.

He waited a while, giving her time to settle properly under the blanket before reaching out and tracing his finger lightly along her spine. “I love you,” he said, “more than anything, you know that, right?”

She took in a heavy breath. “You might as well get some rest. Ami’s summit is day after tomorrow and you’re going to need to look presentable.”

“But, I have blood poisoning and possible organ failure. Ordinary people would have died from what I have,” he practically whined. “Surely that gets me a pass?”

“Suck it up, Meat Snack. You’re a superhuman living in the thirty first century,” she said, throwing his own words back at him. “You’ll be fine.”

He grinned. He couldn’t see her face, but having known her for so long he easily visualised her expression. She was teasing him. Teasing him was good. “What did you just call me?”

She refused to answer, effectively ending their conversation, but it was enough for him to relax again. He shut his eyes and fell asleep to the light, regular beeps of the aircraft’s medical equipment.


	6. The Lab

“Alex?” She’d rung the entrance bell twice already and tried gaining access through the retinal scan more than once, but the doors had remained firmly shut. “Alex!” she yelled, raising her fist. It was time to try things the old fashioned way. “I swear to God, a-hole, if you don’t come out of there I’m going to punch my way through this measly excuse of a door and I’m not going to pay for the repairs.” She bashed against the metal, the reverberations echoing far out into the empty corridor. There was no way he couldn’t hear her, even with his ridiculous post-Freeze-neo-nonsensical-uber-classical-arenbee-rock-combo-whatsit-music playing at full blast. He was ignoring her on purpose. “I’m not joking around, I just came out of a fight with a real life dinosaur and I’m arguing with Nando, I’m not in the mood for your shit!”

Alex’s voice suddenly buzzed through the speakers. “You got into a fight with a what now?”

Makoto grinned. “Nando and I are fighting about-”

“Alright, fine, the question was entirely rhetorical, I _obviously_ care more about the dinosaur. _Tell me_ you have the carcass.”

“ _Urgh_ ,” she looked up at the tiny camera lens in the ceiling. “I will never get over your weirdness, and yes, of course I brought you back the dead T-Rex, because I am an amazing friend.”

“Where is it?”

“I am _not_ having this conversation through a speakerphone while I stand outside your lab like a lonely lemon.”

“Fine, fine.” The doors whooshed open, and he stepped out to meet her, looking for all intents and purposes like a greasy hermit who’d beaten up a homeless scientist and stolen his raggedy clothes.

“You look awful.”

Alex dismissed her comment with a wave of his hand and walked back inside, inviting her to follow him. “I haven’t showered in a while,” he said, somehow thinking that that would make it better, “and these are my most comfortable slacks.”

“They have knee imprints in them.”

“Not surprising,” he said, “since I haven’t washed them in over a decade.”

Makoto looked visibly pained at the idea. “I don’t know how to take that other than to conclude you’re _disgusting_.”

“Whatever. Did you fry it?”

“Not entirely, all I needed to use was my most basic attack,” she noted smugly, “I killed it with a lightning punch to the face.”

“That sounds… unpleasant.”

“It was, I feel like I’m going to be scrubbing dinosaur gubber out of my hair for weeks.”

Alex pulled a face of utter disgust. “How much damage did you inflict with blunt force trauma? Couldn’t you have subdued it somehow?”

“Thanks for the tip, I’ll try and remember that for _next time_ I literally fight a creature from the Jurassic period.”

He sat himself down on something far too complex to be called a swivel chair. “Sarcasm does not become you.”

“That’s what everybody tells me,” she said, leaning back against one of the desks.

“Where is it?”

“On its way to the HazCentre. We’re not bringing that thing into the city until we’re sure there aren’t any-” she was cut off by a wave of his hand.

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill, I _wrote_ the drill,” he said quickly, eager to get to the point. “It’s secured, though, right? You brought the whole corpse?”

“ _Yes,_ you oddball, it’s due to arrive within the hour. I instructed them to prep it for you after they secure it, so it’ll be ready for whatever weird experiments you want to perform on it by day after tomorrow, at the latest.”

“Did you at least bring pictures?” It seemed two days was far too long for him to wait.

She pulled out her cell phone from her subspace pocket and showed him the video.

Within seconds he frowned. “That’s not a real dinosaur.”

“What?” She looked at him and then back at the video, confused.

“It’s not.”

“Well, considering the fight it put up against me, it sure as hell _felt_ like a real dinosaur.”

Alex shook his head. “This is what we _used_ to think it looked like back during the Pre-Freeze. We’ve now come to the conclusion that they were just enormously fat birds.”

Makoto frowned, questioning herself as to whether she heard him correctly. “Nonsense.”

“Nope.”

“Fat birds?”

Alex nodded. “You can use whales as a comparison. If we didn’t know what they actually looked like, based on their skeletal structure it would be easy to think whales were slim and muscle-packed, instead of the blubbery creatures they really are. There’s a lot of evidence now to suggest that they had iridescent feathers, too. This is what we now think they look like, see?”

Activating his magic, he stretched out his hand, his fingertips turning gold, and projected an image into Makoto’s mind. It looked like a giant, garishly shiny, multi-coloured, aggressive penguin.

“Huh. Does everyone know this?”

“It’s been standard elementary school teaching for the past twenty years, so… yeah?”

Makoto took this new information into her stride - it wasn’t the first time a member of the Royal Court had a gaping hole in their basic knowledge-base. Things tended to slip through the net when you’d been alive for almost an entire millennium.

“Well, I wasn’t the only one not to know - our crazy dude seemed to be pretty ignorant of this fact.” She stopped to think about it, “Although, we found a ton of pre-Freeze ‘Jurassic Park’ memorabilia in his place-”

“Wait,” he said, stopping her. “Earth had a dinosaur park pre-cloning era? When? How? Was it a secret military op?”

Makoto shook her head. “It was a movie, apparently,” she clarified, “and a popular one at that so I’m guessing we saw it ourselves at some point. It’s easy enough to find out about, there’s plenty of detail online. Ask Eddie about it, he’ll probably remember, too.”

“Ok, so you’re saying that maybe this guy _did_ know it wasn’t historically accurate and engineered his creature in a sort of twisted homage to the film?”

“Yeah,” she nodded.

Alex could see she that something had suddenly occurred to her. “What’s up?”

“I think I’m starting to get it now.”

“Get what?”

“His M.O.,” Makoto explained. “His file said he was railing on about how he wanted to rid himself of ‘modern creatures’ when he was arrested - we just assumed he was some weird, delusional dinosaur enthusiast, but now I’m thinking maybe it was a little more sinister than that.”

“You’re thinking he was a Pre-Freeze extremist? One of the Dead Moon Clan?”

“Maybe. I might be reaching a little - I mean, he _did_ have easy access to funds and equipment, so it’s not implausible that he was acting alone.”

Alex wasn’t one to ignore his friends’ gut feelings, especially Makoto - she was always more intuition than logic, but so was half of his team. And she was usually right. “Someone like him - clearly mentally unstable, with an unhealthy obsession with something Pre-Freeze? He would have been a perfect recruitment target for them.”

Makoto nodded, happier to be overly cautious than under. She activated the holostrip at the tip of her cheekbone, just under her temple, and typed a message on a keypad only she could see. “I’m shifting authority from Russian police to C-TATA on this.”

“Tell them to be nice - last time the Crystal Tokyo Anti-Terror Agency ran point over there Cairo had to step in.”

Makoto grinned. “That’s why I’m signing the order on behalf of Nando. I’m putting him in charge. He can be the one to deal with all those inflated egos.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “You think that’ll fly by Minako?”

“Our fearless Senshi of Love and Duty is trying to pretend she’s not having the best of times in what’s essentially an almost two-year sex-ation in paradise with two of her three favourite people.” Alex snorted, knowing it was completely true. “Plus she put me in charge of this, and I did almost all of the initial work. It’s only fair.”

“Am I detecting a little hostility?” he asked, curious as to why.

“Resentment,” she corrected. “I know it’s not her fault, but I didn’t like being forced into a mission with a partner I was mad at, it clouds my judgement. She could have been a little more sympathetic - without her here we’re a guard short. Rei and Cairo have picked up a lot of her admin but I’m stuck with most of the extra missions.”

“Hey, I’ve been doing extra-” His protest died in his throat at the quirk of her lips and eyebrow. “Ok, fine I get it, you’re being pulled quaquaversally-”

“Quaqua-what?”

“It means in every outward direction. Pick up a book once in awhile.”

“Oh my _God_ , you arrogant oaf, English isn't even close to being my first language.”

“It shouldn't matter after being awake for almost four hundred years. You've had plenty of time to learn.”

“Well I've never heard of your quaka-quaka nonsense word before. What is it with the Shitennou and your insistence on using overly complex terminology and archaic sayings?”

“Ooh,” he said, laughing. There was a glint in his eye as he knew how she was going to take his next comment, “look at you using a five syllab-”

Makoto shoved him, cutting him off. “Don't you dare,” she warned with a grin and a raised fist. “I will do serious damage to that pretty little face of yours.”

“Hey, it’s not _my_ fault I have a wide vocabulary.”

“You're insufferable, you know that?”

“Yes.”

“How does Ami cope?”

“By knowing what quaquaversal means.”

Makoto snorted. “She probably does, too.”

Alex leaned in, nudging her lightly with his shoe. “Seriously, though, is that the only thing that’s been bothering you?”

She frowned. “What, the language thing?

“Ok, now you’re just being deliberately obtuse.”

“Yes,” she grinned, “yes I am.”

“Hey, _you_ were the one who came to my door and told me you were arguing with Fern.”

“He hates that nickname.”

“Yeah,” he scoffed, “of course he does, but he deserves it because he genuinely chose to name himself ‘Fernando’ and it’s stupid.”

“I like it.”

“It’s an _ABBA_ song.”

“Who?”

He didn’t believe her ruse for a second. “Don’t. I heard their ‘Best Of’ album blasting out from your quarters just the other day.”

Makoto had to think a minute, her eyes widening when it clicked. “ _That’s_ what they were called!” she exclaimed and then frowned. “You know that was, like, three weeks ago, right?”

“No it wasn’t. It was the night Cairo made his penne arrabbiata for everyone and he didn’t use enough chili because he’s a baby who can’t handle anything spicier than black pepper.”

“Uh, yeah. Three weeks ago.”

“Huh,” he said, not quite believing it. “You sure?”

“You need to get out of this lab more often. Cloistering yourself in here is incredibly unhealthy.”

“No it’s not, I’ve got excellent ventilation, plenty of natural light and I’ve timed the system to provide me with ample nutrition at appropriate intervals.”

“I don’t think you want to know just how creepy that all sounds,” she said, genuinely concerned. “What about human interaction, and exercise for that matter, or _showering_?”

He shrugged. “I’ll make sure to include those into my schedule at some point.”

Makoto grimaced. “ _How_ does Ami love you?”

“Because I’m charming and sweet and full of charisma.”

“That’s not all you’re full of.”

“So you and Fern…” he prompted, ignoring the banter bait.

Makoto crossed her arms and readjusted herself against the table. “We’re… fighting.”

“About?”

“Stuff.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that.”

She sighed. She had metaphorically opened the door to this conversation when she had been trying to _literally_ get him to open his doors. “He has less faith in me than I’d like him to have,” she admitted, “and it’s not a me-thing. This is a him-thing.”

“He’s always been overprotective of people he cares about,” Alex tried. “You can’t take these things too personally. It’s an insecurity he’s always had.”

That excuse wasn’t good enough anymore, it hadn’t been for a long time. “It’s unsafe. He keeps putting himself in more danger than he needs to be and that compromises me, because _I_ have to watch the dumbass-love of my life get hurt when he doesn’t have to. And it also means one of our key fighters removes himself from the playing field regularly, which makes _everything_ more dangerous for everyone else.”

“I get it, and you’re not wrong,” Alex said, nodding sagely. “But if you look at what happened today, wouldn’t you say it’s an accurate reflection of your relationship?”

Makoto raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Seriously?” she asked. “Are you seriously trying to use my fight with a totally inaccurate, genetically engineered _dinosaur_ as a metaphor for my marriage?”

He scratched at his light beard to buy himself a few seconds as he tried to find a sensible response. “Ok fine,” he admitted, “when you put it that way it _does_ kinda sound like bullshit.”

“No, no, I’m interested to hear this. So Nando’s the giant, brainless lump that tries to eat everything it sees?” she asked. “I’m on board with that.”

“No, he’s not the T-Rex, you got it better the first time. Your _marriage_ is the T-Rex. You’re still you and he’s still him in the story.”

“Well this is getting boring pretty quickly.”

“Hear me out. So, you know how you had to work together to defeat the fake dinosaur?”

“Wait, are you trying to tell me my marriage is fake?”

“What? No! That’s not what I meant. Look, when you’re fighting something together you work well, you balance each other out.”

“I hardly think this was a balanced fight. His role consisted of almost being eaten and doing a moderately decent job of filming my badassery.” She scrunched her face. “And I still don’t get the metaphor. We’re supposed to be fighting our marriage?”

“Ok, you know what, I suck at this just give me the T-Rex already.”

Makoto snorted. “You can’t stop now, oh wise marriage-guru, especially when things are just getting good.”

“Urgh, forget it, it was stupid, and also he’s been stupid-”

“Agreed.”

“-but his mistake isn’t so bad that it can’t be forgiven-”

“Eh,” she said, considering that part a borderline truth.

“He’ll have done the same with you just as many times.”

She thought about the point for a second. “Fair,” she admitted.

“The question is, though, do you actually _want_ to forgive him for this. And the answer to that, my dear Makoconut, basically boils down to just one thing.”

He had her genuine attention now. “And what’s that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Do you love him more than you hate his flaws?”

“Urgh,” she groaned. Love. _That_ annoying thing. “Unfortunately yes, I do.” The problem was, she was starting to wonder if it was really enough.

“Then nut up and forgive the man. He’s apologised, like, ten times already.”

How did he know that? “I thought you were working in the lab.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “My lack of response or engagement with the outside world doesn’t seem to deter people from telling me all about their problems anyway. Fernidaddio must have sent me thirty messages in the past two days alone.”

It shouldn’t have, really, but the information triggered something unpleasant within her. “Of course he would,” she said. Nando was as lost with all of this as she was, and for some reason that didn’t comfort her very much.

“Like I said,” Alex pointed to himself, “people have always been drawn to me because I’m sweet and charismatic. It’s just a burden I’ll have to continue to bear for all of my unnaturally long life.”

She didn’t smile quite as broadly as he’d expected her to at his comment. “Must be hard having all those virtues and being so humble about it, too,” she said half-heartedly.

“I make it work.” He noticed he was seemingly losing his audience to her own internal monologue. “Why the sudden mood turnabout?” He lifted his arm and took a light sniff of his pit. “Is it the smell?” he asked, “or something I said?”

She ignored his attempt at humour. “I don’t _have_ to forgive him now,” she said eventually.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that. What would we lose by my choosing to remain angry over this?”

“Well, _are_ you still angry over this?”

She looked over at his monitor, watching without absorbing as figures scrolled down the bright screen. There were other lights on in the lab, but for the most part it was dark - supposedly it helped Alex focus - with his computer being the main source. Its glow made him look even paler than he already was. “I could be.”

“And what would you be planning to gain by it?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“That sounds like a slippery slope down to bitterness.” He leaned forward. “You’re better than that.”

She looked up at him. “But we have so much time, Alex.”

“Ah,” understanding dawned quickly, “our blessing and, simultaneously, our curse.” The thought of that would deflate anyone’s mood. “Is that what this is all really about?”

She scrunched her nose in a way he'd always thought of as cute. “No, and yes in a way. A month, a decade… I could draw out this fight for an entire century if I wanted to.”

“Please don’t.” He grasped her real meaning, but he did his best to inject some humour back into the conversation. “I wouldn’t be able to cope with all the whiny texts.”

“And I could?” she asked. “Could he? In a way he’s right, how can I ask him never to do something again if the potential opportunity for him do it includes half a million years.” She huffed. “I’m not naive, no one’s perfect and a longer life span doesn’t change that. But can you imagine it?”

“Imagine what?”

“All the problems we’re going to have. All the fights, all the disagreements, the issues, the capacity we have - and the _time -_ to just… _hurt_ each other.”

Alex swallowed heavily and tried his best not to look like what she was telling him didn’t haunt him, too.

“I don’t know if I have the energy for that.” She looked at him in a way that was far more vulnerable than Ami ever did, and it occurred to him, quite suddenly, just how fragile she was.

Ami was a supporter, an understander, a home for the complexity and darkness of his thoughts, someone who shared his view of the world and their future. Makoto was, at heart, a far more optimistic creature, and it was clear she was looking for a way back onto the road of happiness she’d been travelling on during her youth. He doubted she’d ever really succeed, but he was damned if he wasn’t going to try and help her. “But,” he countered, “it _might_ mean we _do_ eventually attain the ‘perfect’ relationship, right? I mean, we’re complicated creatures, but we’re not _so_ complicated that we can’t figure each other out in half a million years.”

Makoto smiled at that. “I wonder what that would look like. Do we become some sort of homogeneous blob? So intuned with one another that we basically become the same person? And how long do we last like that? Wouldn’t we just get bored with each other?”

 _Yes_ , he thought. _How could we not drift eventually into a state of indifference?_ “Well,” Alex said, “there’s no use thinking about it too hard now, we’re going to find out eventually.”

His response surprised Makoto. “This coming from the guy who shuns all human contact for weeks on end because he can’t live with an unanswered question.”

An easy counter. “That’s different. If we don’t forward science ourselves, if we don’t actively ask, then we’ll never get answers, and there are _so many questions_ . But relationships… we can _try_ and predict the results, but until we actually experience it, we’ll never know for sure.”

Makoto sighed. “You’re saying there’s no point in stressing myself over trying to find an answer artificially when in reality, all I have to do is just wait and see.”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed.

“Then doesn’t that mean that I _should_ drag this fight out?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh, I know what you meant but if you think about it, it applies here, too. Maybe I only _think_ the problem’s an unsolvable one. Maybe it just needs time to work itself out.”

“You don’t have to stay mad at him while it does, even if you have the energy for it now.”

She looked down. “I suppose not.”

“Although… who knows,” he said, voicing one of his own, minor, insecurities, “maybe, in a few hundred years, our point of view will change completely.” He looked into her pretty green eyes. “Maybe we’ll be completely different people, utterly unrecognisable from who we are now… maybe we’ll _want_ other people.”

“Maybe,” she admitted and then grinned. “Maybe we’ll all end up in a giant, polyblob, a la Minako.”

He snorted. “Heavens forbid.”

“Who knows how we’ll change. I hope it’s for the better, but it’s just as likely we’ll become embittered relics, frozen by our own pasts. Honestly, I don’t know which would be worse, becoming a dinosaur in the wrong time, or changing so completely we become unrecognisable, so far away from being human that we lose all that we love now.”

Alex nodded at that. “I don’t feel like I could ever not love Ami.” It wasn’t a lie. Right now she was the centre of his world, but he wasn’t so foolish to think that that wouldn’t change with the drifting of time.

“And for now, I suppose, I don’t want to live in a world without Nando by my side, as irritating as he can be,” she added. She smiled a little. “When did we become so great at relationships?”

There it was. That shift away from her dark thoughts. He admired her so much for her ability to do that, that strength, that iron will of hers pulling her out of the abyss when it tried to drag on her. She was amazing. “Well, for me it was when I found out that the love of my life in a non-sex-repulsed asexual and I really wanted to make it work with her.”

She rolled her eyes, somehow conversations with the Zoisite always ended up involving his sex-life in some shape or form. “How's _that_ going for you?” she asked, taking the bait.

“It’s been ok recently, you know?” He looked up at her and gave her that infamous grin of his. “After three hundred years you’d really expect us to have figured things out, otherwise we really shouldn't be together.”

“Fair point.”

“That doesn't mean we still don't argue. We just know each other well enough to realise we want to make it work.”

“Ok, now it’s just overkill. I got your point the first time.” She scrunched her face again. “Mansplainer.”

“Hey, you came here and _literally_ bribed me with a dead, fake dinosaur to give you relationship advice.”

“Actually,” she corrected, “I came here and literally bribed you with a dead, fake dinosaur to get you out of your lab and remind you to attend Ami’s super important summit,” she said, revealing the true reason for her visit. “The advice was just a bonus.”

“I-” he paused, “I didn't forget.” At her raised eyebrow he amended his statement. “Ok, I _did_ , but the second the summit date was set, I made sure to create an alarm for it, see?” He touched his holo strip, activating it. “Reminders for tomorrow.”

“The Himeiji summit. Be sure to attend or you'll be the biggest jerk in history for breaking the heart of the only person who seems to care enough about you to ignore your _immensely irritating_ flaws.”

Makoto grinned broadly at the AI’s response.

Alex sighed and rolled his eyes. “I have to reprogramme her.”

“Don’t, she’s hilarious.” She looked at him. “So you’re coming, yes?”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

“Good.” Now that her mission was an official success, she revealed her hidden trump card. “Oh hey, did I forget to mention that I have all of Dr Moreau-wannabe’s notes, from conception to test running?”

“ _Seriously_?”

“Yeah, he was pretty thorough.”

“No, I mean, you don’t remember ABBA but you _do_ remember ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’ by Racist McRacist Face?”

“There was a conference last week on Pre-Freeze literature and Wells came up in the discussion.”

“Oh,” he said, suddenly remembering, “I was supposed to go to that one, too, wasn’t I?”

“Yup,” she confirmed, “but Cairo covered for you.”

“And when you say you have _all_ his notes…”

“I mean _all_ of them, there was about two hundred TGBites’ worth of data on his server. I also had Nando get more than just the footage, we had a drone record schematics and vitals of the dinosaur while it was still alive.”

“Wait, so you mean I might not have to shove my hands into disgusting fake-dinosaur giblets in order to study it?” He blinked. “Why the hell didn’t you lead with that?!”

Makoto smirked. “I was saving it as blackmail material in case the carcass wasn’t enough. I figured you might not be interested in the creature itself, especially since I smashed it up so badly.”

“Gross,” he shook his head, “and worse, I was outsmarted by someone who doesn’t even know what quaquaversal means.”

She laughed and shoved him again. “I do now, Jerk.”

“Jock.”

“Nerd.”

“Damn right I am, now get the hell out of my lab.” 

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said, eagre to leave the dingy mess behind her. “Just, for the love of all things good in this world, please, I’m begging you, _shower_ before tomorrow.” The doors opened automatically for her and then shut swiftly as she left.


	7. Baking

He found her in the dessert room - the one Nitty had been set on building as soon as CT had been established. The idea had originally sprung from a conversation many years ago where Makoto had tried to explain that there was no such thing as a special kitchen dedicated entirely to the making of cakes and cookies.

“ _Not even for the super rich?!”_

_“Not really. I mean, unless it’s a business thing-”_

_“No, like in a regular house.” Usagi was clearly displeased with this new information. “When I get my own place, I want to have a separate kitchen where the only food that’s being made is dessert. I thought that was a thing, you know, that houses could have.”_

_Makoto grinned. “It’s not a thing.”_

_“Well, can we make it a thing?”_

_She shrugged. “Anything’s possible I suppose, you’re going to be Queen of the world one day, I’m sure it’ll be easy enough to accomplish. You’ll probably even set a trend.”_

_“But Crystal Tokyo is so far away! I wanted to get a kitchen like that within the next few years, when Mamo-chan and I move in together.” She turned her bluebell gaze to Fernando (he’d been named Noah back then). “You’re an architect, right? You could design a dessert kitchen.”_

_He chuckled at just how serious she seemed to be about the issue. “It’s not really the kind of thing that I do-”_

_“You’re dating Mako-chan,” she said, “she can help you design it since she knows so much already about baking. She’s the best dessert maker in the whole world!”_

_With enthusiasm like that, how could he say no? “I’ll see what I can do.”_

_“And who exactly will be using this super-specialised kitchen of yours?” Rei asked, fully intending to bring their leader back to earth. “You, Miss ‘I-don’t-want-the-water-to-burn’?”_

_“Oh my God I was tired, ok? That was one time!” Usagi stuck her tongue out at her. “Spoilsport. You’re just jealous because I’ve come up with a genius idea to get desserts whenever I want.” Her eyes suddenly lit up as a thought occurred to her. “Hey, ask Jay if I can patent the idea.”_

_Makoto burst out laughing with delight._

It wasn’t an important moment in their lives, nor was the conversation particularly memorable - he had many recollections of Usagi being an adorable goof, of Rei’s acerbity, of Makoto’s kindness and smiles. To this day, he had yet to understand why her laughter had left him so breathless and speechless and desperately in love, but not knowing wasn’t something he minded so much. “Babe?” he called out. She was whipping up a batch of whipped cream. “Makoto.”

She put down the beater carefully and picked up a nearby teaspoon. “Here,” she said, scooping up some of the light, white goop and offering it to him, “let me know if it’s too sweet.”

They stared at each other unflinchingly, her extending out a peace offering, and him wary over taking it and somehow messing everything up again. They hadn’t had much time to talk during the summit, and for about a month afterwards they’d been so busy with work they’d barely spent a single night together (and whenever they did, it was entirely to catch up on sleep). Today was one of the first lulls they’d had. The Royals were returning home the next day, so all energy was currently focused on readying things for their arrival from Elysion. He took the spoon from her hand and tried the cream. “It’s good,” he said. “A little under-whipped, maybe.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s for tomorrow, so I’ve left it like that on purpose.”

“Oh.”

“I can finish whipping it when the desserts are ready to be served.”

“Oh,” he repeated. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, and yet there were a thousand things he needed to tell her. “Is, uh… is it for the pie?” he asked, seeking to keep the conversation going.

“ _Pies_ ,” she corrected and then began scooping the cream into a container. “And a cake or two.”

“Serenity will be pleased.”

“Yes,” she said. “I hope so.”

He watched her work in silence for a little while. “Look,” he said eventually, “after all that we’ve been through, I really want to tell you I’m sorry, I just… you’re the part of me I can’t let go, but I promise I will, I _will_ make it up to you.”

Makoto’s swivelled round, spatula in hand, and eyed him in incredulity. “Did… did you just paraphrase a song from the 1980s?”

He was shocked at being caught. “No! I- I mean, no, why would you even think that?” He cringed internally. He was the _worst_ liar in the world.

“Oh my God, yes you did.”

“Ok, fine. I didn’t think you’d notice because you’re Japanese and it was a western song, and because your memory for stuff like that is lousy. Plus,” he said, impressed, “it’s _really_ obscure.”

“My memory’s not lousy.”

“ _Pfft,_ what colour was our first car?”

“Ha! Trick question,” she said smugly, “we never owned a car!”

“We went through three of them, babe. One of them was stolen from a parking lot when we went to Tokashiki in twenty twenty five.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning as she searched for the memory. “Oh yeah… the white Honda…”

“What month is our wedding anniversary?”

She looked up in panic. “Uh…” being asked that question on the spot was making things worse. “Autumn?” she tried.

“When’s Rei’s birthday?”

“Eh, it’s in the calendar.”

“ _Jebus_. If you weren’t a Senshi, I’d be worried.”

“Well my memory isn’t so bad that I’d forget that Chicago’s ‘Hard To Say I’m Sorry’ has been the alarm song you’ve been waking up to every single morning for the last six months. Jackass.”

“Ah.” He grinned, amused at his own stupidity. “That’s probably why I thought of it, then.”

“No kidding.” She opened up the oven door and checked the pies.

From what he could tell they looked like they were her famous pumpkin ones and that got him excited because she knew that was his favourite kind. “Are we going to be ok?” he asked.

She didn’t answer immediately, letting the question hang in the air while she deliberated on her answer. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. She was tired of fighting, especially when she knew there would be so many others to come. It just wasn’t worth it. “Come here,” she said.

When he moved closer she pulled him in and touched her lips to his, sighing softly when his hand snaked into her hair and he deepened the kiss. She loved him, that fact was never in doubt, but the questions she’d asked in front of Alex hadn’t quite been answered. The curiosity was still there, the doubts, the fears… could something like this ever truly last? She honestly didn’t know, but then she supposed, no one ever _really_ knew. And for now Nando’s arms felt like home and her heart ached for him when he wasn’t standing beside her. It would have to be enough. It _was_ enough, she told herself. She would make sure it was.

He pulled away first. “You, uh… you wanna have makeup sex on the countertop?”

Makoto’s initial and immediate response was a curt no, but she stopped herself. She _had_ missed the sex. “Let me finish up the cream and take the pies out or they’ll burn. I also have to move the rest of the foodstuff far, far out of the way, but after that then sure, why not?”

Fernando grinned. “I love it when you get all health and safety on me.”

“I know you do. Now do me a favour and wash those bowls while you wait.”

“Ooh, foreplay.”

She didn’t bother to hide her laugh.


End file.
